Fluval 305/405 cleaning

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mfdrookie516

Aquarium Free - 2+ Years
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
19,407
Location
Orange Beach, Alabama
This is a question i guess ive never come across. I was wondering how i should clean my filters. I know i need to keep the biorings and foam blocks in a bucket of tank water, but should i rins out the filter and clean the impeller, or is it just a self cleaning thing? i dont want to build up nitrates or anything, but i took one apart the other day to add some media and it looked fairily clean except it had a little tan colored gunk in it. should i clean it or just leave it be? Oh, and just to clarify, i have one 305 and one 405, the 405 has a spray bar, the 305 just has the stock outlet
 
take everything out, rinse/store in discarded tank water. replace media if needed, paper towel and wipe the inside. Put everything back, rinse with the discarded tank water. Refill with 'new' water. Hook up, prime, plug in, pop a cold one (o yea clean up too.....later)
 
you should replace the media monthly... if you stop the waterflow like your supose to.. when you plug it back in.. just turn it on full blast... it will prime itself..
 
i just run bio-rings so i dont have to replace anything, except the sponges, but they last for months and months... i figured that priming trick out the first time i took it apart lol... i pumped and pumped on the primer forever, and then once i actually thought about it, the hoses work like a gravel vac and prime it for me lol
 
I run fluvials (SW) and don't have any of the sponges in mine.
 
I just cleaned my sponges...(sw 125g tank) and i keep them in there to catch the nasty gunk... it looks like brown lake water when i wash each sponge in a critter keeper lol.(use ro water when cleaning them) yeah.. defenantly recommend keeping them in there scott lol.
 
mine looked pretty nasty too... of course so did the water in the hoses when i used them to fill the bucket. i guess it was a good idea to let the water flow through them real fast and clean the gunk from them too.
 
THey were causing nitrAte build up.
I can't add the sponges back to my FX5 unless I got dig through the dump! I can see the benefit for keeping them in, but I run Purigen in mesh bags and that seems to catch plenty of stuff too.
 
For me, something else that needs to be cleaned. And that's the last thing I'm looking for :)
 
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